Just Security: “Two hundred and fifty years since the nation’s founding, and almost as many since the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the role of the grand jury in the American criminal justice system continues to spark debate. Recently, scrutiny of the grand jury and renewed calls to strengthen it as a bulwark against government overreach have grown more intense as courts have determined that federal prosecutors have engaged in misconduct in seeking indictments. Although the calls to amend and improve the grand jury process are not new, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent practices make plain the need for changes that will ensure fairer outcomes, impose accountability, and protect the rule of law.  As outlined below, three targeted changes to Rules 5, 6 and 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would give courts and defense counsel the necessary tools to verify that prosecutors have instructed grand juries correctly with respect to the law, and to hold them accountable when they have not. These proposed reforms would require disclosure of the complete grand jury transcript to the court in every indicted case, give defendants access to the legal instructions delivered to the grand jury, and require prosecutors to confirm on the record that the legal instructions they provided to the grand jurors were legally accurate…”